Loading blog content, please wait...
By Nashville Indiana Title Company
Three Papers to Round Up Before We Draft Your Deed When someone calls us to say they're under contract on a place off Bean Blossom Road, one of the firs...
When someone calls us to say they're under contract on a place off Bean Blossom Road, one of the first things we ask is what they already have in hand. Not because we expect you to have everything ready. Most buyers don't, and that's completely normal.
But a few documents make the deed drafting go smoother, and if you can put your hands on them early, you save yourself a phone call or two down the road.
A deed is a short document that does a big job. It transfers ownership from the seller to you, and it gets recorded at the Brown County Recorder office to make that transfer official. To draft it correctly, we need three things nailed down first.
The single most useful paper is the seller's current deed, the one that put the property in their name. It carries the legal description we'll copy forward onto your new deed, and that description is where accuracy matters most.
Out here, legal descriptions don't read like a subdivision plat with tidy lot numbers. A wooded parcel near the state park might describe metes and bounds that reference an old iron pin, a road that's been renamed, or a fraction of a section that was split off decades ago. We've seen descriptions that essentially read like walking directions along a creek.
If you don't have the prior deed, don't worry about it. Our title search pulls the chain of ownership straight from the county records, so we can find it. But if the seller handed you a copy at some point, or it turned up in the closing packet, set it aside for us. It saves a step.
Before we type your name onto the deed, we need to know exactly how you want to own the property. This sounds simple, and usually it is, but it's a decision that lives on the document permanently, so we want it right the first time.
If you're buying with a spouse, do you want to hold it as tenants by the entirety, which is common for married couples in Indiana? If you're buying with a partner, a sibling, or a friend, are you taking it as joint tenants with rights of survivorship, or as tenants in common with separate shares? These aren't just formalities.
They decide what happens to the property if one owner passes away.
We're not attorneys and we won't tell you which structure fits your situation. What we will do is make sure the deed reflects the choice you and your advisors land on. So the "paper" here is really a decision, ideally written down: the full legal names of every buyer, spelled the way they should appear, and the form of ownership you've settled on.
If a trust is involved, we'll need the name of the trust and the date it was established. Retirees moving to Brown County to buy a cabin as their next chapter sometimes take title in a trust, and getting the trust name exactly right keeps the recording clean.
If you're getting a mortgage, your lender's information shapes the paperwork we prepare alongside the deed. We coordinate with the lender so the deed, the mortgage, and everything else record in the right order on the right day.
What helps us most is knowing who your loan officer is and which lender you're working with, so we can get the closing instructions early rather than the afternoon before. Those instructions tell us the exact vesting language the lender expects and confirm the loan amount and terms that need to match across documents.
Cash buyers can skip this one entirely. There's no lender to coordinate with, which is one reason cash closings on rural acreage tend to move a little quicker. Either way, we build the file around what your transaction actually needs.
There's a rhythm to a smooth closing, and most of the real work happens before you ever sit down at the table. Gathering these pieces up front is what lets us draft a deed that's accurate, recordable, and ready to sign without last-minute corrections.
Here at Nashville Indiana Title Company, we do this work every week for buyers coming from Indianapolis, Cincinnati, and Chicago, and for folks who've lived in Brown County their whole lives. The property might be a cottage a block off Van Buren Street or forty wooded acres with a shared well toward Gnaw Bone. The deed still has to say precisely what's being transferred and to whom.
So think of these three as a head start, not a homework assignment. The prior deed or title work, a clear decision on how you'll hold title, and your lender details if you're financing. Bring what you have, tell us what you're still sorting out, and we'll handle the rest of getting your name recorded on your new place.